I am currently using an HP 1700ps, which uses a software Adobe Postscript RIP, and seems to be OK. We also have a HP 2500C that is OK, but a little idiosyncratic in that it is very fussy about its paper handling - you can't tell it lies and get away with it! The group has an HP 3500CP (54" wide") that is a terrific work-horse - we routinely do runs of 50 or so prints of A0+ sized maps. In general, my advice would be a Hewlett Packard printer if Postscript is a requirement. They seem to produce solid, reliable printers with good RIPs.
Note that size is unimportant for Postscript, in general. It is perfectly possible to write a very short postscript file that will take an indefinitely long period to process, and fill the printer memory - Postscript is a Turing complete programming language, and so it is in general impossible to predict how long or even whether a program will ever end without actually running the program (the Halting Theorem). It is even impossible to predict how many pages will be printed purely by inspecting the code - you could (in theory) embed a pseudo-random number generator that varies the number of pages output. If you ever want to try this, do a web-search for "postscript mandelbrot fractal" and you will come up with a variety of quite small postscript files that will put your printer to sleep for hours! The other side of the coin is that a Postscript file that is enormous may never come close to filling the memory of a printer because it consists entirely of objects that the Postscript interpreter can handle "on the fly". Most vector maps come in this category. The worst cartographic objects for printing that we routinely come across are raster images that are rotated. This forces the printer to hold the entire image in memory while it rotates it. With a large satellite image backdrop, this can take days, though we usually kill something that is taking too long!
All the best
Paul
>>> [log in to unmask] 22 July 2002 13:51:23 >>>
Dear Lis-mappers,
Can anyone recommend an A3 post-script printer which can cope with large
file sizes, please?
Evelyn Dodds
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Evelyn Dodds
Geography Resource Centre
Arts C175, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9SJ
(00-44)1273-873244
[log in to unmask]
www.geog.susx.ac.uk/grc/
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